Nico di Angelo: Boy, Uninterrupted
by Mission to Marzipan
Summary: Nico-centric during TLO with four chapters featuring four scenes/events that we only ever saw from Percy's point of view. Nico as he struggles with his father, the loss of his mother, and basically being twelve. Fuller summary within. M for language.
1. Chapter 1

**Yeah… So, it's me again. Hopefully you're not all sick of me by now. I re-read all of **_**TLO **_**last night and ideas kept swarming at me. Set during **_**TLO **_**(obviously), this is a kind of deleted scenes fic featuring Nico. There will be three chapters: this one is after Hades sends Nico to his room. The next will be set during the scene Percy sees in his dream, with Nico digging in the flowerbed to try and summon his mother. The third and last will be set around the time Nico is trying to persuade his father, Persephone and Demeter to join in the fight against Kronos, up to the point Mrs O'Leary bounds in with the message Percy wanted her to send. So… Nico-centric. Enjoy please. At least, I would much prefer it if you enjoyed — it would make me feel incredibly warm and fuzzy inside, and I rather like that feeling. However, you are also free not to enjoy should you so see fit, in which case I shall just have to try and curb the tears ^_~. Arrivederci! **

Now, Nico had always known that he was never going to have the typical father/son relationship with his father. Not just because his father was a god and everything because, well, where's the manual for _that_ (it's been three thousand years; Olympus could have at least produced a pamphlet or _some_thing on the subject) but also because of the whole Lord of the Dead thing. He was not the the only demigod but (as far as he knew) he was the only son of the King of the Underworld, and there was pretty much nothing that screamed sugar and spice and all things nice about _that_ job title, was there? Or, perhaps more importantly, there was nothing that screamed _affection _in that description, which Nico felt a sincere lack of when he was dumped on the cold, hard black granite floor on 'his' bedroom in a manner more befitting for a sack of potatoes than, you know, _your twelve-year-old son_.

It took a few seconds for him to adjust to where he was. Shadow-travelling he could deal with (mostly) because he was in control but wow did he hate it when his father did that hand-waving thing and just banished him to wherever he pleased, usually somewhere far out of sight and/or mind. He was in what Hades insisted in calling Nico's room, yet Nico had never known somewhere to feel _less _like home, and he had slept under more than one park bench in the world above, and was quite comfortable curling up next to a stack of bleached bones in some pitch-black, endless tunnel down here. He may be Hades' son, but this just didn't feel right.

There was a massive four-poster bed that looked like it could take up the entirety of a small bedroom in a property that wasn't a palace hung with black velvet curtains with silver detailing around the edges.

Okay, so Nico may only be twelve, a guy and seventy-odd years behind when it came to a little thing called interior design but… _black velvet_? Really? The rest of the room was pretty much your standard issue state room in Hades' palace; dark, dark purple silk wall hangings embroidered with silver thread, plenty of black furniture (which _really_ brought out the black drapes over the full-length window and the black silk bed linen) with lots of chrome and smoky plate glass bits attached. All of the shiny, reflective surfaces spat the light from flaming torches on the walls and the huge bone chandelier burning an acidic green around the room.

Perhaps his dad was trying to prove a point by deliberately missing the car-sized mattress and choosing the floor to deposit his son on instead. The jarring to Nico's spine had certainly shut him up for a few minutes, he would give his dad that because, well, _ouch, _but it still returned to the sack of potatoes analogy, which Nico was not best pleased about.

He made an attempt to push his hair out of his face and got to his feet, wincing slightly, then feeling guilty for taking the luxury of wincing when he had gotten Percy into so much trouble. His own father had _tricked _him into luring Percy to the Underworld, all so he could have his own way, have his own child (_him_) be the subject of the prophecy. His father hadn't even bothered to ask if Nico wanted in on this prophecy crap because the answer would have been hell (that was never not going to be a pun anymore, was it?) no.

Did it look like he wanted the weight of the world on his shoulders? He had seen what that had done to Percy and it looked about as much fun as having a stepmother that officially entitled him to tell Cinderella to suck it up and stop whining. So what, you expect sympathy because your stepmother asks you to throw a mop and a broom around the place once in a while and won't let you to out to go to a party? Persephone's free time was spent either transfiguring her stepson into some kind of common weed or hunting Nico down so she _could _hex him into a common weed. Sorry, Cinders, but Nico's got you beat.

Nope, Percy could _have _the stupid prophecy for all Nico cared. Apparently Hades hadn't realised that, though, because now Nico was apparently bumped up from understudy for passerby no. 3 to star of the freaking production, and he hadn't even seen a script yet. Nor, in fact, did he _want_ to see the script. He was perfectly fine with letting Percy handle it, thank you very much.

It wasn't even as if Nico had brought Percy down to the Underworld under false pretences; he _was _going to help him bathe in the River Styx, but the deal he thought he had struck with his father meant that Percy was going to have to have a little chat with Hades first, in exchange for information about Nico's mortal family. That seemed like a fair exchange, right? Apparently not, because that had ended up with Percy in the dungeons and Nico _here_, which was a dungeon despite the drapes and the rug and the view; he had been banished here enough times to know that it was still a prison despite the trappings trying to conceal it.

He growled in frustration and picked up the lamp on the nightstand and hurled it at the double doors, which he already knew would be locked. The entire room was sealed against shadow-travelling as well. His dad really didn't leave anything out. The lamp shattered in an incredibly satisfying manner, spitting glass shards over a wide radius. How could his dad _do _that to him? Did he not understand that Nico _needed _to know about his mom, about where she had come from, more than anything else? Then to further double cross his own son and throw Percy in the dungeons… His fists tightened into balls and he swiped at a glass vase containing a single emerald flower, sweeping it from the dresser across the room to smash in the corner. The enormous gemstone skittered over the granite floor, the noise echoing throughout the chamber.

Percy was going to _hate_ him, and it wasn't even his fault. He had meant to make good on his promise but no, apparently his dad had other ideas. Clenching his teeth, his eyes darted around the room and landed on the emerald. It was ridiculously heavy as he weighed it in his palm before hurling it at the mirror on the dresser, which splintered and fell from the frame in a number of large shards, tinkling loudly on the plate glass top of the dresser and even louder as they bounced on the marble floor.

Percy was never going to trust him again, was he? Which, okay, maybe that was a little bit justified because, hey, he had sort of sold him out to his father. And all for what had actually amounted to a titbit of information he could have scraped out of any official government place that dealt with immigration papers and deaths from like eighty years ago. He hadn't been asking for his mother's name, her country of origin, who her parents were. He was asking for _her, _her as a person. Her quirks, her likes, her dislikes, her voice, whether she looked more like him or Bianca… He was hungry for every tiny particle of her life that he could get his hands on because he needed it. She was his mom and he just… _needed to know. _How was he supposed to know what his father had been planning? He had only sold Percy out a tiny little bit, which had then spiralled into selling him out quite a lot, actually, but not on purpose.

Nico was not stupid. He had street-smarts far beyond his age, honed from dragging himself up from the age of ten, learning to shadow-travel and rend huge fissures in marble floors, how to vanquish skeleton warriors and chat with the dead without anyone there to guide him. There was nothing dumbor clueless about him; in fact there probably had been a little niggling suspicion that his dad wouldn't stay true to his word because, well, his father was Hades, but he had been blinded by the dangling carrot of his mother. Just as his father knew he would be, he reminded himself bitterly.

Percy _had_ a mother, one that wore a blue apron covered in her own floury handprints and not only pretended never to see Percy eating the batter for her cakes but actually made extra so he could. Sally Jackson smelled like flowers, usually, and more often than not some type of candy or dish soap. She hummed benevolently to herself when she was alone working in the kitchen, her hair piled at the back of her neck with a clip, and always had time for everyone, even when she was at the kitchen table scribbling desperately on a legal pad, a pen behind each ear and ink on her fingers because an idea had struck her for her novel.

Little did she know that for a certain number of golden drachmas, Percy could and did arrange for a Muse or two to appear in her apartment from time to time and give her a gentle nudge. Nico had seen her face light up whenever she saw Percy, saw that nothing she was holding was too important to be tossed down at a moment's notice to hug her son. How could a guy that had all of _that _waiting for him at home possibly understand the gaping mother-shaped hole Nico had not just in his memories, but in his heart?

He was rapidly running out of things to break, he noticed, his eyes darting wildly around the room for something else that would break into a million pieces. Anything to maybe help vent a tiny little bit of his frustration — frustration aimed at his father, his predicament and most definitely Percy, from whom he had got a luck of pure hatred and disgust without him ever having questioned or attempting to understand Nico's motives for what he had done. He was in the middle of tearing a wall hanging down when two skeleton-soldiers came bursting through the doors, marching side-by-side. Nico whipped around to face them, placing a hand on his sword, but they were too quick and grabbed an upper arm each, lifting him clean off his feet.

"Hey!" Nico yelled, kicking and struggling as they sunk their bony fingers into his flesh. "What do you think you're doing? Get off me!" He paused, reluctant to drop the trump card he was thinking of playing, then opening his mouth to do it anyway. "Do you know who I am?" And wow, that sounded fifty times more stupid than it had inside his head, and it had sounded pretty freaking ridiculous when it was bouncing around up there. Painfully so, in fact. May the gods bear witness to the fact that Nico di Angelo would _never _be saying that again.

Both of the soldiers ignored him, something he wasn't used to when it came to his dad's skeletal minions, who normally jumped to attention whenever he walked by. One even took Nico's sword from its sheath.

"Give that back!" Nico demanded in his best I-control-you-so-listen-to-me-or-I'll-grind-your-b ones-into-fertilizer voice. The soldiers weren't impressed and dumped him on the bed (even undead flunkies could aim for the freaking bed, Nico noticed savagely) and turned to leave, taking his sword with them. Nico scrambled to his feet and ran after them, skidding in front of them. "STOP!" he commanded as a last resort, holding out his hands. This didn't drop them either, and he knew his father had deliberately made them immune to his powers. Say what you want about Hades, at least he had foresight. The skeleton with his sword shoved him aside and he fell sideways into the dresser.

Fine. His father wanted to ground him to his room, take away his sword? Then bring it on. Nico just hoped that his father wasn't expecting the room to be intact when he returned for his son. The young demigod grabbed the shattered mirror from the dresser, spun and threw it as hard as he could, demolishing the skeleton with his sword. The mirror went sailing out into the hall to it splinter against the wall. Nico darted forward eagerly to pick up his sword, but was stopped short when the hand of the skeleton he had just nailed grabbed him by the ankle with surprising force considering it was just a disembodied hand, slamming him to the granite. He stretched out desperately, his fingers mere millimetres from the hilt of his sword, but then the other skeleton grabbed him and picked him up without any dignity, slinging him over his shoulder in a fire-fighter's lift.

No amount of kicking and cursing (in both Greek and English, all words that Bianca would _so _not be happy he had picked up) prevented him being slung down in a chair in the corner. He tried to get up but silver cords came whipping out of nowhere and lashed his wrists to the arms of the chair and his ankles to the legs. "Seriously?!" Nico howled as the skeleton turned to leave again, handing his almost-reformed buddy an ulna he was missing as he went. "Come on, Dad! What is your _problem_?! Are you just going to leave me tied up for four years until the stupid prophecy applies to me?" he yelled out into the corridor. "Bad plan! Also, this is _not _a stellar example of parenting!" he growled a little desperately as the skeletons closed the doors on him.

Well. This was just plain _fantastic. _Fan-freaking-tastic. He jiggled his arms hopelessly, trying to work the bindings free. This had to be a new low when it came to immortal parenting, right? Then, of course, Nico remembered Ethan Nakamura's eye patch and actually, his dad seemed pretty lenient. Even if he had had his own son tied to a chair.

He jiggled again, rocking the chair on its legs, but had no luck. Come _on_, dammit, he had a cousin to break out of the dungeons and a mini-vacation to the shores of the River Styx to arrange for him. He didn't have time to be tied to a chair. He was shaking his head to clear the ADHD-induced tangent that was asking him when he_ would_ have time to be tied to a chair when his eyes alighted on a long shard of mirror right next to him.

Knowing what he had to do and resigning himself to the fact that it would probably hurt, he sighed and started building up momentum by rocking the chair side to side until it toppled over, drawing a hiss of pain from him. He shoved his arm as far forward as he could and managed to get his middle finger on the shard and inch it towards him until he could turn it on its side and slide it between the underside of his wrist and the arm of the chair, praying he didn't slice open anything important as he did so. By curling his fingers inwards, he was able to wiggle the glass splinter with enough range that he was attacking the cords. Okay, no one said this was going to be a fast escape plan, okay? But if he had enough time then maybe, just maybe…

Luck was not on his side, though, and soon the doors opened again and the skeletons re-entered, probably to find out what the loud, demigod-crashing-painfully-to-a-granite-floor-whil st-tied-to-a-chair noise was. Upon seeing his predicament, they righted his chair for him then immediately turned to leave again.

"Okay, please, look, I'll be good," Nico said suddenly. He didn't know if skeletons fell for puppy dog eyes but by the gods he was giving them all 1,000 watts of that sad, pathetic stare he knew he could ace anyway, just in case. They had turned to face him, albeit a little grudgingly, because he was still the son of their boss no matter what their orders were, and Nico's heart fluttered with the tiniest germ of hope. "Please. I promise I won't break anything else. Just untie me. My dad doesn't want this, not really." He cranked the dial on the pitiful-meter up to eleven, usually a look he reserved only for extracting large denomination bills from kindly-looking women when he was wandering the streets back on earth.

The skeletons seemed to consider, looking at each other, and Nico held his breath, praying silently. How smart could his dad's lackeys be, anyway, given the complete lack of brain in their skull cavities? Finally, the silver ropes disappeared and Nico jumped up, streaking across the room towards the open door. Too slow. Like, _way _too slow. One of them grabbed him by his jacket and jerked him back yet again, whirling him round so that he was dangling in midair. Nico battered at the arm holding him uselessly then lashed out, putting a hand on the skeleton's face and shoving him away, hard.

Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with a burst of power that felt like it was jerking his naval right out of his body. He gasped; it felt like he was emitting an invisible pulse in a circle radiating out from his body. Black dots began to pepper his vision as the two guards crumpled to the floor, one dropping Nico's sword with a loud _clang. _He didn't really know what had happened. All he knew was that he felt dizzy, he had his sword back and he had somehow incapacitated the guards by accessing some kind of power he didn't know that he had had before. His eyes flicked to the door. Oh yeah. And he was free.

Snatching up his sword he made a run for the door and took off down the corridor, turning an immediate left and barrelling into a skeleton, shattering him so completely that he didn't even need to try his new skeleton KO power. He flicked a pinky finger off his shoulder and kept running, stabbing the next skeleton he saw with his sword, not pausing to watch him disintegrate into the ground. He flew through his father's palace, thrusting his outstretched palm at any skeleton he saw and immediately rendering them unconscious.

Given that his father knew full well that he could hack and slash his way through an entire army of skeletons with his sword if he wanted to, Nico decided to just keep blasting them with whatever weird ass sleep ray he was apparently now emitting, since his father obviously didn't know he could do that (_he _hadn't known he could do that until two minutes ago). Hopefully this would put his father off the scent for a little while so that it would take longer for him to figure out what was wrong in his palace. Hopefully.

He was panting as he hurled himself through a door that led to a narrow spiral servants' staircase at the heart of the building which ran for the entire height of the palace, from the depths of the dungeons and stopping off at every floor on the way up to the tallest turret, so as to provide easy access for the zombie help. It wasn't just from the exercise, though; he could feel himself draining with each skeleton he put to sleep.

The black spots were breeding in front of his eyes, doubling and quadrupling over and over, and his head had started to thrum with exertion as he threw himself down the stone steps. He shoved hard at the sternum of a skeleton chambermaid coming up holding a dustpan and broom, probably headed for his room he thought, feeling a little guilty, then even more so as the skeleton tumbled head over heels backwards, breaking into more and more pieces on hit each stone step on the way down.

What remained crashed around the corner to the landing below him and shattered into even more bits with a series of hollow clatters. Two more floors passed and he was getting dizzy from the circular descent, anyway, when two of the undead handmaidens Persephone had waiting on her when she lived down here spotted him from above. He turned and waved an arm and they crumpled into a heap, somehow managing to get their ribcages tangled as they fell. He nearly pitched forward down the stairs as the black spots gobbled up his entire field of vision for a few seconds and the thrumming in his head turned up a notch or fourteen to become the screech of a band-saw trying to cut titanium. Apparently he couldn't keep this up forever.

Well. Best break Percy out sooner rather than later, no?


	2. Chapter 2

**I don't like this chapter at all, really. I can't figure out what's wrong with it — it's just not how I imagined it. Of course, I don't know how I imagined it, which is probably part of the problem. It just feels off in a way I can't say I can figure out, even after six or seven read throughs. So… answers on a postcard, please (by which I guess I mean the review box) if you can figure out why this chapter is so bad. It may just be that I wrote the first five pages whilst hungover on Sunday afternoon (free advice for my readers today: red wine **_**or **_**white wine of an evening but not both, never both) but yeah… There's something wrong with this chapter. It's frustrating and I wouldn't post it normally, but I'm just not entirely sure I can make it any better, even if I started all over again so… yeah. Try not to vomit from the hideousness of all that follows. This is Nico after Percy leaves him in the Underworld, up to the point where he tries to summon his mother. I am merely borrowing the characters from PJO and taking them out for a spin. I do not own them nor do I lay any claim to them by writing this.  
**

It was safe to say that Nico was pretty pissed at Percy. He had left Nico to pick up the pieces with his dad — no mean feat to say the least as Hades was pretty pissed himself give that Percy had not only escaped from his palace, but had also managed to bathe in the Styx, an important part of his domain, without even seeking permission from him first. When this was coupled with having seen Percy hack through his skeleton army and the fight culminating in him being thrown from his chariot and held at swordpoint, then topped off with the fact that Percy was _still_ going to be the child of the prophecy… Yeah. Needless to say, that did not make for a happy Hades. Even by the King of the Underworld's standards. There were absolutely no prizes up for grabs for guessing who he was going to take his anger out on, either: it was, of course, the son that had betrayed him by freeing Percy and therefore aiding him in fulfilling the prophecy. So now Nico was stuck here dealing with _that_ whole mess, even though he had practically begged Percy to let him join the fight above, a big deal because, well, did he _look_ like the begging type? It was a sucky position to be in, to have to beg someone for what you wanted, and it hadn't even worked. Percy had told him to stay in the Underworld, obviously in the hope that he could talk some sense into Hades, which was dumb because Percy had not only met his father, but had been looking at a very long stretch in his dungeons for the mere crime of turning sixteen four years before Nico. How could you reason with that?

Nico rubbed his throat absently. Percy's handprint was rising in livid purple over his Adam's apple and it was getting increasingly painful to even inhale, let alone talk. Luckily, there was a distinct lack of conversation to be had on the shores of the River Styx, which helped with that particular issue immensely. For a terrifying second, Nico had seen the rage in Percy's eyes and had known that Percy not only could, but probably would kill him where he stood. Percy had been so _angry_, in a way that he had never seen Percy be angry at anyone before. Great. Looks like he had got a front row seat to the spectacular debut of a whole new level of Percy's anger. Nico was sitting pretty much exactly where he had been standing when Percy had told him he had to stay down here. He had been staring into the turbulent black water ever since, watching the shattered and broken dreams of mortals drifting idly by, discarded regrets of lives not lived fully enough. He swallowed, even though it only increased the pressure on his bruised throat, staring particularly hard at a wilting bridal bouquet floating downstream in an attempt to stem the angry tears he could feel welling behind his eyes. A child of Hades was not going to be caught perched on the banks of the River Styx crying. He would never hear the last of it. All around him lay the detritus of Percy's triumph against his father's army, and he picked up a femur and threw it bitterly at the bouquet, which sunk under the force of the impact. He had been flicking some of the smaller-gauge musket balls into the water but he had run out. Plus it really made his fingernail hurt.

Percy obviously still didn't trust him, judging by the look he had given Nico when he had asked to join him. Nico had rescued the guy from sixty years in the palace dungeons, for crying out loud, not to mention actually managing to make good on his original promise of bringing Percy invulnerability. What more did he want as proof that Nico was on his side? Then to turn around and say that Nico should stay in the Underworld, within reach of his father, after royally pissing Hades off? That was just plain _mean_. There was something in every demigod's voice when they spoke of their immortal parent — a sense of want or lack; the general feeling that something was missing, that either your mom or your dad possibly had hundreds of other children to dole out affection to, which meant it had to be spread pretty thin for it all to go round. Gods and goddesses were never there for you when all you wanted was a parent who could truly understand and connect with you when even your mortal parent couldn't. That just wasn't the way things worked, which suited the gods but sucked for their kids. It also led to people like Luke rising against Olympus, so it was really just poor parenting all round to be honest.

The immortals were sustained by humanity's continued tributes to their various spheres, even if humanity didn't know they were doing it. He had learned this much from Pan, who lay fading because of the loss of the sanctity of the Wild for humans, and he had caught hints of such thoughts from Hestia in their first ever conversation together. Humans no longer appreciated hearth, home and family; Nico had definitely heard some kind of sad, lingering regret on Hestia's part for this. She had said herself that she felt her days were numbered, and all because of the changing mortal lifestyle. So the gods depended on humanity not just for the constant supply of (expendable, he thought bitterly) heroes to do their bidding, but also for their very survival. The gods needed humanity, but the lifespan of a mortal was so fleeting for them they had no idea how to connect, to really connect, with mortals, including their own children. They could start, but mortals just died so fast from their perspective that it was just too impossible a task for them.

Percy knew this. He knew how hard it was to gain the respect and affection of your immortal parent, especially if you were an illicit child of The Big Three, who expected so much more from their kids, especially now, when they weren't technically supposed to exist at all. Despite this, Percy had humiliated Hades and then demanded that Nico stay in the Underworld with him, even though he had had a hand in that humiliation. Great. Perhaps that might be an appropriate sentence to pass on Nico if Percy _had_ been in the dungeons for sixty years, but it had been, like, five minutes. Not enough to earn this.

Nico poked at the ashy, barren ground with his sword moodily, drawing his knees up and hugging them to his chest with the other arm. What was he supposed to do now? There was no way he could go back to his father's palace and face the music; his dad would be too pissed to even look at him, let alone give him the chance to try and change his mind about joining in the fight against Kronos. There was nothing in the world above other than panic and fear and dying hope either, and he was miserable enough as it was, thanks, without having to deal with freed Titans and what sounded like a fairly futile attempt to contain them. He supposed he could stay down here and keep as far from the palace as possible; it wouldn't be the first time he had wandered solo throughout his father's realm with only the dead for company (which seemed odd to everyone but him), but what good would it do?

"Get up," demanded a cool, silky voice from behind him.

Nico jumped and turned his head, seeing his dad standing behind him, his eyes alight (literally, they were full of bluish flames) with fury. Nico gulped and tightened his fingers on the hilt of his sword, as if that would do any good in the face of his father's wrath. "Father—"

"There are no words to explain what you have done to me," Hades cut him off with, the fire in his eyes burning an brighter blue, flickering at their heart with a kind of purple colour.

Nico wished Hades would yell at him; that would be less disconcerting than the low, angry growl he was getting now. "I had to! I could never have been the child of the prophecy. Even if we had four years, you've made it pretty clear how useless you think I am. Percy was the one and I'm sorry if you don't like it, but—"

"And this gives you an excuse to betray me?" Hades demanded. "My own son, releasing prisoners against my wishes? This is treasonous! You're lucky I don't kill you right now."

Nico leapt to his feet. "Go on!" he yelled, throwing his arms wide. "Come on then, bring it on! If I really mean that little to you then just blast away. It'll probably be less painful than being stuck down here with a father that only cares about me when he can use me to get one up on the rest of his family!" He was breathing hard, his face twisted in anger. He didn't care anymore; if this was the end, so be it. What else was there left for him to live for, anyway? Percy and his precious Olympians didn't want him. His sister and mother were dead; might as well make it three for three for the di Angelo family.

"You dare tempt my wrath, child?" Hades spat angrily. "I suppose you would prefer it if I just ended it all now for you, wouldn't you? That's the way of all cowards; they shy away from their destinies, from life itself. You are nothing like your sister. She would have embraced life as a warrior; she had already begun to do so by joining Artemis' band of Huntresses, as poor a decision as that was. Yes, she had your mother's spirit and zest; yet I see none of your mother in you. Maria had the courage to stand up to a decree from Zeus himself; you insult her memory with your actions. I am glad she can't see you now."

Nico lost it. He had no idea how, but suddenly he was screaming and charging at his father, his sword raised. So he was an insult to his mother's memory, was he? He made to slash at Hades, but his father looked at him disdainfully and flicked a wrist. The sword was wrenched from his grasp and was soon clutched in Hades' fist, and Nico was blasted to the side, colliding painfully with a large boulder and hitting the ground face first. He got up slowly, spitting ash out of his mouth and cuffing it out of his eyes, leaving long soot trails across his face. He crouched next to the rock, a hand on it for support, glaring at his father with a look of hate.

"Foolish child," Hades snapped. "You cannot harm me, Hades, with a Stygian iron blade. Especially one I had a hand in creating."

Nico blinked, his anger momentarily forgotten. "You… you created my sword?" he asked, surprise making his voice quiet.

Hades' blinked, the fire in his eyes dying at the question. Then he sniffed disdainfully. "Of course I did. What, did you seriously think I'd just take any old spare sword from my armoury and give it to you? A child of mine deserves a weapon of power and prestige, one made for them and no one else. Anything else would be a dishonour to you. Although I admit that I don't consider smithery as among my talents, I commissioned this sword for you, Nico. I watched it being forged to specifications that I knew it would make it perfect for you and you alone. When it was done, I cooled it myself in this very river and presented it to you as a gift, as a token of my acceptance and acknowledgement of you."

Nico felt stunned. He had no idea that his father had gone to such lengths for him. Even Percy, for all he raved about the balance and precision of Riptide, didn't have a weapon that was created specifically for him by his father. Percy's sword had passed through generations of heroes into his hands, and Percy was tasked with saving the freaking world. If anyone should have a bespoke weapon, it should be him, and yet… Perhaps he was going to have to rethink the whole lack of paternal affection thing, even if his dad had topped off the earlier chair-tying incident with rearranging his son's face by having it telekinetically meet a rock.

Hades looked down at the sword, tilting and angling the blade so it caught the tiniest of sheens from the gloom around them and glinted darkly. "Of course, this was when I thought you were going to be a child who made me proud, a child who would be the hero of all heroes. I see my gift was a _misplaced_ gesture," he finished pointedly, curling his lip at his son still crouched in the dirt. "Had I known you would be such a crushing disappointment, I would not have gone to such effort."

"You made a sword just for me?" Nico repeated, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. Even yet another barbed comment from his father about the fact that he had failed to amount to anything worthy of his parentage could not stop him clutching at the fact that his own father had cared enough to forge him a weapon of his own.

"Please don't add density to cowardice on the list of your frankly undesirable traits," Hades snapped. "I repeat: yes, I did make it. Although you have done nothing so far to earn such a weapon, and I'm starting to regret doing so."

Nico got slowly to his feet, gradually letting that bit of information sink in. "Look, Father… I know you're angry with me. I know you're seriously disappointed. But I think you're blinded by the way everyone on Olympus has treated you for all these years. Surely a grudge against them—" Nico gulped as the murderous expression returned to his father's eyes. "I mean, a totally justifiable grudge due to their crappy treatment of you, and the lack of respect they show you, isn't worth sacrificing the entire world over? I mean… If the Titans kill off all the mortals, they're all going to start showing up down here and just think of all the paperwork for one thing… If you waited for me to come of age then it would be too late. The war would be over and we would have lost. I had to do what I did. I _had_ to."

How to explain to the King of the Underworld that the world couldn't end because Nico didn't want it to? How could a god whose main dealings were with the dead truly understand the concept of living? Not only this, but he had an eternity to experience all that the world above had to offer should he so wish, but Nico _didn't._ He probably had even less time than your average mortal, because demigods tended to die young and bloodily saving the world so as many mortals as possible could die old and peacefully. That was the age-old tradition that had been working for millennia. Nico knew that it was highly unlikely that he would reach an age where he got to sit in a big rocking chair, grey and hunched with age, but happy and surrounded by a passel of grandkids (even if he was so inclined to procreate which, ew, was so unlikely), and this made it even more important to fill the time between now and his pretty much guarunteed early (and messy) grave with simply _living_. Never had he appreciated the ability to live and see and feel and experience more than now, now that the Fates had taken his sister and shown him that people were cut down in their prime sometimes, when they were just children, even, without ever getting a chance to experience what it meant to merely be alive.

The world couldn't end because Nico di Angelo was hungry for every aspect of it. Everything. He wanted to taste espresso in an Italian piazza. Return to California and ride that one rollercoaster he had heard several mortal kids raving about. Zeus permitting, he wanted to fly in a helicopter down into the Grand Canyon, go on a safari in Africa, swim with dolphins, sleep in until three in the afternoon and not have it matter, eat Ramen for all three meals a day, learn to drive a car pretty much just so he could honk and flip off the other drivers… There were a million other things that made his list, and each item got all the more pressing with each passing day as his life became increasingly dangerous. The world was a beautiful place, full of wonders he was yet to discover, and he was not going to sit here and let that be taken away from him. He owed it to Bianca to try and live the life she had been so cruelly denied.

"The House of Hades has had little glory from its heroes," Hades said a little morosely. "In fact, the other gods are inclined to believe that it has only brought shame upon the world. This was the chance for me to prove them wrong, and you thwarted that plan. Now the glory shall go to another son of Poseidon. My name will be left in the dust of aeons once more. All because of your betrayal."

"It doesn't matter what your family thinks!" Nico half-yelled exasperatedly. "You're above this! Better than them! Why do you care if your name is not honoured on their terms?"

"The children of the other gods have gone down in history throughout the ages as heroes!" Hades growled. "Everyone knows their names, their deeds, even now when we are no longer worshipped as widely as we once were. Theseus and the Minotaur, Heracles and his damned labours, Jason and the Golden Fleece… When my children go down in history it's for leading the losing side! For once I had a chance of having _my_ child immortalised in the stars, at having the respect I deserve from my family sitting oh so proudly up there atop their mountain but no. Apparently that wasn't to be, because my son is a _traitor_."

"I did the right thing," Nico said certainly, not even bothering to yell such was his conviction. "I did what was necessary to, oh, I don't know, _save the world_.The Titans aren't going to leave you out! You're an Olympian whether you like it or not and they will come for you. Maybe not right away, but you are not totally invulnerable and you can't fight them on your own. The sooner you realise that, the sooner you put away your stupid _pride _and stop holding onto to this grudge of yours and wake up to the fact that the world is about to come crashing down around our ears the better."

Hades' face twisted with rage. "I will not be spoken to like this!" he roared. "I am the King of the Underworld and _no one _speaks to me like that. You are no son of mine. Now get out of my sight."

Hades waved his arm, and that was how Nico ended up occupying Percy's old cell, heavy Stygian iron manacles bolted to the floor preventing him from leaving.

Nico had no idea how long he stayed in the cell. The blank, black walls skewed his entire concept of time, even though he managed to keep track of time fine in the Underworld normally. He had chewed at all of his nails until they were one more nibble away from bleeding and tried to sleep as much as possible. Sleeping helped, because he caught snatches of what was going on in the world above through his dreams, which even his father's dungeon couldn't take from him. Even if the dreams were depressing, at least he could feel vaguely part of everything. He saw mortal panic as Typhon crashed through the country. He caught glimpses of Manhattan asleep, a tangled clip show of invading forces, shattered bridges, dying campers… In his waking moments, all he could do was seethe. These things were going on in up there, heralding the end of the world, as he had warned his father, and he could do nothing about it. What was more, he couldn't even persuade his father to do anything about it. He jerked at the manacles angrily, reopening a barely-clotted gash on his wrist from various other escape attempts. Blood wound slowly down his arm and he looked at it impassively, barely taking it in.

All he had done was tell the truth to his father, and this was the thanks he got? Locked up like some common prisoner in the depths of the palace he was supposed to call his home? Right now, his only consolation was that, should Typhon and Kronos et al came battering down the doors of the Underworld, at least they could just blast him nice and quick because he was all chained up. It would save the exhaustion of trying to fight or flee from them when they finally came for his father's seat of power.

This just plain _sucked_. There was no getting around the fact. It wasn't only the manacles and the dungeons that were getting to him; granted the chains were annoying but if there was one thing a child of Hades was okay with, it was dark spaces. It was more the reflection time it was giving him. He kept hearing his father over and over again, telling him that his mother would be ashamed of him, that he was nothing compared to his sister, that he was disowned, basically. That he wasn't worthy of his own sword. As if he didn't already have an inferiority complex a mile wide.

Suddenly, the wall opened up in front of him and he looked up expectantly as two skeleton soldiers entered. One had the key to the manacles and unlocked them, then between them they manhandled Nico out of the cell and away from the dungeons. Nico didn't bother to struggle — he could already tell that they were heading for the throne room, for another showdown with his father, and what good would trying to escape do? Even if he did get away from them, where was there to go? What could he do in the grand scheme of things, especially without his sword?

He grunted at the skeletons shoved him down and his kneecaps hit the hard floor in front of Hades' throne. He glanced up at his father through his hair, flicking his head to the side to move it out of his vision. Hades was watching him impassively and coldly, his fingers steepled and resting in his lap.

"I trust your time in the dungeons has taught you something?" Hades asked eventually, signalling that the skeletons that had brought Nico in could leave.

Yeah. It had taught him to never take a TV for granted again. Even if it was tuned to some ridiculously boring channel, it was better than staring at the opposite wall for hours on end and having to resort to counting and recounting your teeth to stave off insanity. "Yes, father," he murmured to the floor.

"I will not tolerate insolence. Not even from my own son," Hades said. "You keep angering me, Nico. And furthermore, you keep disappointing me. You don't act in a way that I see as befitting for a child of mine. I'm sorry I had to punish you, and I'm sorry I went so far as to say you were no son of mine. That was… well…" He cleared his throat, bringing a fist up in front of his mouth. "_Wrong_ of me. I suppose," he finished, trying to hide the word 'wrong' in his fist. He pressed his mouth into a thin line, obviously finding admitting that he may have been wrong distasteful. "But it would be an idea for you to have a change of attitude if you wish to stay on my good side."

_Good _side? Where did he keep that? "Yes, father," Nico muttered again, biting the inside of his cheek to keep the sarcasm in. Not the time or the place.

"I don't enjoy punishing you, Nico," Hades said. Before Nico could stop himself, his head whipped up and he gave his father an incredulous stare. "I mean it," Hades continued. "You are my son and I do care about you in my own fashion, but it's just that you've acquired this twisted notion that my Olympian family are somehow any responsibility of mine. They only want anything to do with me now that they're losing. Zeus may be imploring me as a brother now, but once, a long time ago…" Hades face darkened, and he looked through Nico for a few minutes almost wistfully, as if he were seeing the past and longed to climb back into it. Hades sighed heavily. "A long time ago," he continued, his voice suddenly fraught with an emotion that Nico had never seen before, an emotion that shocked him to the core because it was coming not just from his father, from whom all kids expected invincibility, but from a god, and the god of the dead at that. "Zeus took from me a person I loved above nearly all others. There was no brotherly love in that deed, and now he shall get none in return," Hades finally managed, his eyes hardening as he stuffed the sudden upsurge of emotions back away.

"I will try to be a better son," Nico heard himself say hollowly, hoping his father didn't pick up on the lack of enthusiasm behind his voice. It just seemed the right thing to do, having seen the expression of grief and anguish flutter alternately over Hades face — placate him in any way possible. "And I'll try to do as you say."

"That is all I ask, Nico," Hades said. "You may go to your room now."

Nico blinked, shaking his head and looking up at Hades again. "Father, no. Please, I was hoping—"

Hades held up a hand to cut him off, smiling a little sadly. "Do you think I've never heard a false promise before?" he asked. "That is often all I hear from the dead, or from living mortals petitioning me to have their dead returned to them. Although I'd like to assume otherwise, I'm not sure that you have any intention of doing as you promise, Nico. Even if you cannot persuade me to join your little resistance effort in the world above, I sense that you wouldn't think twice about merging with Perseus Jackson's ranks the second I turn my back anyway. Be grateful that I am confining you to your room this time and not the dungeons."

"But—" A guy could never finish a freaking sentence around here, could he? Before he had even finished the first syllable of his protest, he found himself back in his room. Back where this whole stupid thing had started. He eyed the double doors for a moment, then picked up the newly-repaired lamp from the nightstand and, in a moment of total déjà vu, tossed it hard at the doors. Minions had come running last time. There's no reason they wouldn't again. The lamp never got to the doors, however; just before impact it vanished and reappeared back on the nightstand. Nico whirled around and glared at it, his mouth falling open indignantly. So now he couldn't even smash up his own room? He threw himself down face first onto the bed and yelled into the mattress for a bit. It didn't really help, only resulted in a little seriously unattractive drooling, but it was a start.

He sighed and rolled onto his side, noticing for the first time that a little round table was set for a meal. His stomach lurched unpleasantly at the thought of food but he walked over to the table idly anyway, flicking the crystal vase with his fingernail and listening to it ring. The goblet next to the plate was steaming slightly, and he picked it up and took a gulp of the hot chocolate inside it. The taste of it was so good, so familiar, that it brought back a flash of recollection that was swatted to death inside his head like a gnat almost immediately. He frowned and took another sip. It was almost as if he had drunk this exact hot chocolate before but had forgotten. Either that or something was stopping him remembering it. Just another part of his life before the Casino that was mysteriously missing.

Taking the goblet with him he crossed to the window, climbing up onto the wide windowsill and settling with his back against the wall, contemplating the dark and eerie landscape on the other side of the glass. Somewhere out there in his father's realm was his mother's spirit, the key to unlocking the swathe of his life that had been erased from his memory. It was clear he was never going to get the answers from his father — his mother was his last option. Maybe if he could see her, just once, he wouldn't even need to ask any questions. Maybe her very presence would be enough to fill the void inside him so completely that his frustrating lack of memories would cease to matter. He wondered if Bianca ever got to talk with her, whether they got to be together now they were dead.

It was almost as if someone had suddenly reached into his chest and squeezed their fist around his heart. He was unexpectedly consumed with the burning desire to see his mother, so much so that everything paled in comparison to it. He could summon the dead; he had done it before, so why not now? He scrambled off the windowsill, suddenly feeling animated, and dashed over to the bed, jerking the bedclothes from the mattress and starting to knot them together in a way he hoped would hold his weight (he wasn't good with knots and stuff but surely tying stuff together was pretty simple and a knot was a knot, right?).

He had seen kids on the climbing wall at Camp. Granted, he had never had a go himself — he felt reluctance on their part to let him, anyway, son of Hades that he was — because getting boiling lava poured down on you might be some campers' idea of a fun afternoon but he could do without the third degree burns, thanks. Plus it meant being outside and standing around in all of that nature which seemed obsessed with shoving itself down his throat whenever he emerged from the Underworld, and that was probably less pleasant than being burnt to a cinder by lava. When he was convinced that the bedclothes were secure enough to prevent him from plummeting to his death, he snatched the heavy, silver knife from the tray next to his food and tipped the goblet upside down so that the contents vanished. He shoved the knife in the lock on the window and twisted and wrenched as hard as he could until it gave way, flinging the window wide open. As cold air wafted into the room he grimaced; if unbreakable décor was the latest improvement to his room he knew what the next addition would be if (when) he got caught — some nice window bars. In black, naturally.

Knowing that he had that to look forward to later, he tied off his makeshift rope to what he hoped was a nice heavy, secure armchair and lodged it against the wall beneath the window. The chair seemed to weigh a ton as he was pushing it, more than him, surely, so perhaps it would hold long enough for him to reach the ground? He bit his lip uncertainly then, clenching the stem of the goblet in his teeth, he tossed his sheet-rope out of the window, watching it flap and unravel down into the darkness below. It stopped a little short of the floor, but he could jump the rest of the way, right? He hoped. Athleticism was not the main hallmark of the offspring of Hades, but as long as he didn't die, all would be well.

"Geronimo?" he tried nervously, mumbling over the stem of the goblet, as he hopped up onto the windowsill and made the fatal mistake of looking down. Ah, so he was high up. Nice. Good to know — a reminder of that was _just _what he needed right now. He wormed and wriggled his way into position to that he was dangling with his feet on the wall and the rope clenched tightly in his fists. The chair didn't come sailing out of the window after him; so far, so good. Slowly and painfully, he began to inch his way down the outside of his father's palace.

He was halfway down, his arms trembling with the effort and sweat running down his face, before he realised that he probably should have tried sticking his head out of the window and asking a couple of skeletons to grab him a ladder as a less death-defying feat of escapology. Huh.

Unlike his father he could admit when he was wrong, so he'd just have to chalk this one up to experience. If anyone asked, he would tell them that a ladder kicked the ass of amateur abseiling when it came to scaling the walls of your father's palace so you could reach the gardens of your spiteful stepmother, dig a large hole in her flowerbed and pour in a goblet of wine to summon your dead mother to ask why you had no memories of her or life before you were nine years old. He was sure that was something other people would need to know, right?


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay so here we go. There will be another chapter after this one! Yeah, the fic got away from me again. But if you're not used to me grossly underestimating how much writing things will take then what are you, new? If so, HI. I'm the crazy person that sits here and writes these things. Sorry this took so long. I had a bout of writers' block brought on by a little bit of a down kind of mood, which swallow me up every once in a while, and when I moved out of that I was busy working on another fic. Then I figured I should probably finish what I've started before even thinking about that. Hence a third chapter right here. Thanks for all of your reviews so far. I hope I've managed to reply to you all. You've been awesome at helping me through the mess I've called my life for the few weeks.**

**Quick note to ****Resha04**** regarding the spacing of this chapter. Sorry. I went through the whole document manager double spacing this after I uploaded it and when I hit save it reverted back to the original. Apparently, this site abhors wasted space. Sorry about that. Try pressing ctrl and + on your browser to stave off needing glasses as strong as mine. Also, a note of thanks to ****Orochi-Ne ****whose PMs have been both valuable and awesome recently.**

**This chapter is set just before, during and after the episode Nico tries to summon his mother. It involves Nico's reaction to the scene he sees. Due to this, I have lifted a few lines of dialogue directly from the books. I do know I've done this but by doing it, I claim no ownership to these lines or the series in general. Look at that. An author note and a disclaimer in one. I'm back, baby!**

**Mission to Marzipan out.**

**PS - be prepared for Language. I'm sure you all know what the capital L means.**

* * *

Nico's arms felt like they were being pulled out at the shoulders. He was about to lose a tooth to the stem of the goblet clenched in his mouth and he was shaking all over from the effort of not ending up as a grease spot on the flagged courtyard below. Not that he was complaining, of course.

He reached the end of his rope and looked down. It had left him with a bigger drop to the ground than it had looked like from way up there. A bead of sweat rolled down his back and his arms were screaming at him. Where was Rapunzel when you needed her, for crying out loud? That girl knew how to throw down a makeshift rope, one that reached the ground at that. With a loud exhale to psych himself up he took the goblet out of his mouth and held it in one hand, letting go almost immediately with the other. He screwed his eyes shut as the cold, dank air of Hades briefly whooshed past his ears before he hit the ground, bending his knees and rolling to the side to absorb as much of the impact as possible. Gasping, he mentally ran through a checklist to make sure everything — legs, arms, ribs, skull and, most importantly, spine — was still intact. No searing pain made itself immediately present so he got shakily to his feet, counting his escape mission as a success.

Outside of the confines of his room he could already feel the allure of the shadows huddled against the palace walls so he slipped silently into them, reappearing again in the middle of Persephone's garden courtesy of the shadow of the garden wall. Casting nervous glances around he crouched down behind a bush laden to the point of drooping with emeralds and once again just let himself breathe. It had all been going swimmingly so far and if there was one thing he knew about his life it was that things _never_ went well for him. Having something go his way was an occurrence that had apparently been banned by the universe some time ago. Any minute now he was expecting sirens and bells and whistles and searchlights and whatever else his father could deploy to hunt him down and return him to his room.

Once he had calmed down a little, although the blood refused to stop hammering in his skull altogether, he began to gouge chunks of the barren soil from the flowerbed with his hands, blackening them and leaving a crescent of grime under each fingernail. He had to make the most of the time he had; it would definitely not take his father long to figure out that he had gone and there was no way he was getting locked up again without seeing his mother. The desire was consuming him as he dug in the flowerbed, widening and deepening the pit. If he could just see her, talk with her just once, then—

He suddenly sat back hard on his heels, his hands falling to his sides. Then _what_? What was he hoping to achieve by summoning his mother? How could an incorporeal entity with his mother's image and voice be any kind of replacement for the real flesh-and-blood version that had apparently loved him and raised him, only to be wiped from his memory like she should mean nothing to him? His fist gripped a handful of the ashy soil. It was so fine that most of it trickled through his fingers despite how tight he was holding it. He could summon the dead — _had_ summoned the dead on many occasions, even if one of those ghosts happened to be Minos and to be honest he'd rather forget _that_ giant clusterfuck, please — but what had it ever brought him? Did he feel any less lonely and grief-stricken having seen his sister for the first time after her death? For the second, the third?

What about the ninth time, when it was night and Nico was huddled over a shallow hole clawed out of the turf in Central Park?

The hole had only been filled with the meagre offering of weak coffee cajoled from a volunteer at a homeless shelter and a Cinnabon that his stomach had growled angrily at him for throwing in, yet Bianca came to him anyway. She was still dressed in that stupid uniform of Artemis, the one that had torn her from him and got her killed. Bianca couldn't touch him, of course, even though his teeth were rattling in his skull from the cold and there were tears coursing down his face, but she tried, holding her ghostly hand as close to his face as she dared.

"I don't want this anymore," he whispered to her, his voice breaking and his fingernails embedding themselves in his palms as he tried to quench the desire to rush forward and throw himself at her, to let her hug away problems as she always used to.

"What don't you want anymore, Nico?" Bianca asked him, the serenity her voice had adopted since she had died cutting into him especially deeply just then. How dare she get to feel so at home and at peace with her death when it was clawing at him from the inside and had left an echoing void in his chest?

"This!" he spat miserably, throwing a vague hand at the pit in front of him. "To keep seeing you like this all the time, through a pit and some offerings and as a ghost… I want you back, Bianca. Just let me find a way, I'll talk to Father. Maybe he can—" Bianca's sad smile had practically punctured his heart because he could tell from that one smile that she had already given in and accepted her fate. She clearly had no plans to return to Earth and to him, Nico, her baby brother.

"Nico, come on. You don't have the power to raise me from the dead, silly. That's beyond any demigod. Even us. And as for Father, well…" She had broken off and sighed, not because of Hades but because of Nico's widening brown eyes shimmering with fresh tears under the dull, far-off gleam of a streetlamp. "He must uphold and accept the laws of death, Nico. And so should you! You're his only son and heir now. You can't have me back and that's the way it is."

"But—"

"Nico, please stop doing this to yourself. There are no buts when it comes to dying — it's a fact that everyone with a mortal lifespan must face up to. I've had my time on Earth and I've moved on. That was my fate and this is how it's supposed to be." Bianca was pleading with him, trying desperately to make him understand. "You need to know that I will be here for you whenever you want me. If you summon me I'll always come but think what this is doing to you. Think about how you're torturing yourself by bringing me back over and over, constantly showing yourself what you can't have. Why do you think I was so reluctant to appear to you in person right after… _it_ happened? I knew that you would cling to me and never move on just like you're doing now. It's hard for me to see you like this, Nico. Look, you have a life and a destiny all of your own now. One that doesn't include me but one I want you to live out for yourself."

"How am I supposed to let you go?" Nico asked her, immediately trapping his bottom lip between his teeth again as it wobbled, biting down into the flesh to the point of drawing blood to keep the tears that were threatening at bay.

"You could start right now," she suggested, holding a hand up to his face again and meeting his eyes, smiling at him. "I shouldn't be here, Nico. You don't need me anymore. You have to accept that I am dead and that it hurts so bad but it's _natural_. It's mortal and normal and it's something you've got to feel. It's called grief; just because you're a son of Hades and can summon those you grieve over at will that doesn't mean you get to be immune from it. That's not healthy. I love you, Nico. Don't forget that, please. I have to go now. Your frequent summonings are drawing a bull's-eye on your back for Kronos to nail. Please be careful. Be safe. I love you and I know that you can do anything."

After she had disappeared, Nico had taken to the foliage in the park with his sword with greater efficiency than any Weed Wacker could ever hope to compete with just to try and vent some of what he was feeling. Plus, he kind of hated nature; seeing the infertile soil of his father's realm, this made sense. Maybe that was why Pan had left him out when doling out all of that cryptic future crap down in the Labyrinth.

At first he had just thought that Bianca was sick of trekking out of the Underworld at his bidding and that she just didn't want to be summoned anymore. It had taken some time for him to realise that she had been right, that the only way he could move on was through mourning her loss rather than through a desperate scramble to keep her alive in his mind.

He started digging again. Bianca was different. He remembered her and he loved her. She had been the only maternal force he had ever known. She was right to tell him that he was using her memory as an anchor then tossing that anchor overboard and sinking right to the bottom. She was right to point out that he was drowning down there as he clung to her, his anchor, desperately. But this was totally different because it was his _mother_, so-called because she was a mere biological fact and not his mom. How can a woman you can't even remember be mom when the only thing you knew about her was that she ovulated once and you were the result? As much as it pained him to say that it was very true. He wasn't summoning her for reasons of emotional attachment — well, not _just_ for reasons of emotional attachment. It wasn't that he didn't want a mom, because he did, but Bianca had been so freaking good at it that he would never really need a second one. For now he just had to see her and speak to her because she held the key to so much of his past.

He finished digging. Even here in the palace gardens the soil was barren and ashy; he had had trouble making sure the hole was going to stay a hole and not have a gigantic cave-in at any moment. A mutter at the goblet on the ground next to him was answered by the sound of wine pouring from an invisible bottle, stopping just before the brim. Now or never. Go time.

He took a deep breath and took one last quick glance around before pouring the wine into the hole and beginning to chant, "Let the dead taste again. Let them rise and take this offering. Maria di Angelo, show yourself!" Despite telling himself that this was not a deed born of personal attachment, rather one necessary for his personal growth, nothing could stop a burble of elation rising in his chest as the air in front of him filled with a white smoke that began to mould itself into a female figure. His mother had returned.

Hades was almost angry at his son's total lack of subterfuge. This was a child who could bend the very shadows to his will, disappearing into them and emerging from them in total silence, and the way he escaped from his locked bedroom was by throwing _sheets_ out of the window. Sheets which he had then left fluttering against the side of the palace, a gigantic beacon for all to see that announced what he had just done. Needless to say, much would have to change in Nico if he were ever to become the child of the prophecy.

He stopped himself, his brain snagging. He had gone from considering Nico's ascent as a given to being… _uncertain_ as to Nico's future. If there was one thing Hades didn't do, it was uncertainty. All of Nico's protestations had hit their mark despite all of his pretences otherwise. As much as he hated to admit it, the words of his young child were burrowing through the foundations of his plans and eating their way to his core. Nico was thrusting aside thousands of years of precedent when it came to his snap-judgements and solid conviction and he was just a mere child. Hades had no idea what was happening to him, but Nico was making sense. Even if his actions would never bring glory to the House of Hades, Nico's faith in Poseidon's brat had probably saved the world which… was _probably_ for the best and all. As begrudgingly as he admitted that. Today was apparently a day for reluctant admissions on his part.

He had to console himself with the thought that, providing Jackson managed to pull something out of his newly-invulnerable ass and actually save the world, there would be future prophecies, other opportunities for Nico to prove himself worthy and become a child his Olympian family would respect him for spawning. Perhaps when Nico was older and better trained it would be him saving the world. One day. Not today, though — that job had already been taken, and he supposed that was a good thing. The world probably shouldn't end. It would create such a mess…

Hades was wearing his Helm of Darkness. Nico had no idea that he was being watched as he crouched in the shrubbery, trying desperately to summon his mother. Hades' face twisted into a frown at his son's efforts. No good would come from reawakening the past by speaking to his mother. He had seen this happen to his children before, seen them be consumed by the shades they could summon at will, and that was one of the reasons he had used his dominion over the dead to make sure Nico could never summon his mother. He was concerned that the resultant pain would break him; Nico was by far more fragile than he had ever known a child of his to be. It was actually kind of an embarrassment. Not only that, but he needed to keep Maria quiet. As much as he had loved her, Maria was too good, too forgiving, to show Zeus for what he really was: her murderer. A few words from his mother and Nico would forgive the Olympians too. He would much prefer it if Nico didn't find out yet, not until the moment was at its ripest, when the opportunity to make him hate Zeus was just bursting to be seized.

Hades smiled to himself as Bianca appeared to head Nico off at the pass. She was a good child; she knew her place and was always willing to do what he asked of her even now she was dead. The frustration at having her dead so early, before he had had chance to claim her and turn her into his warrior, was immense, especially when she responded so well to his commands. Yet Alecto's words rang as true now as they had nearly seventy years ago: he had to accept the laws of death. That meant accepting that Bianca was lost to him and that Nico was now his heir. He would be adequate. Eventually.

It was somewhat of a shock to Hades to see Nico dissipate his sister's image with an angry swipe of his hand. Despite everything, Hades had assumed that Nico would find sufficient enough comfort in his sister's presence to be persuaded to discontinue his actions. He had completely underestimated his son's sudden drive and passion.

"Maria di Angelo, speak to me!" Nico called, a tug of desperation in his chest evident in the tiny quaver in his voice that tipped the scales from a command to a plea.

Hades' eyes widened as mist began to form in front of his son again. Was his son's ritual so powerful that it was temporarily overwhelming his own power over the dead, the power that meant that Maria could never be summoned by Nico? Admiration rose in Hades' eyes as it seemed that, yes, Nico was on the verge of contravening his authority through sheer force of will and determination. By combining his mortal side that was so doggedly fixed in the world above even when he was imprisoned down here with his godly half, Nico was on his way to achieving something Hades never would have thought possible. Not that he _would_ achieve it, of course, but he was giving it a pretty damn good go.

Hades sighed. This wasn't the opportune moment he would have picked to reveal Nico's past to his son, but at least this way Nico could see his mother without actually summoning her spirit and allowing his emotions to cloud his better judgement. It was time to reveal what he wished he himself could forget: the death of Maria. With a slight hesitation he waved an arm and Nico's mist turned dark and billowed outwards, forming itself into that scene inside the hotel lobby that Hades would never be able to forget.

Nico felt himself falling for the second time that day, though this was a different type of falling. Though he was kneeling on the ground it felt like he had been plunged forwards into the scene, yet he could still feel the earth beneath his hands and the damp pressure oozing up from the soil into the knees of his jeans. It was almost as if his consciousness was tumbling forwards without him until he found himself on his feet on a large, plush Turkish rug in the lobby of what looked like a very expensive hotel. He leapt out of the way and two kids came careening past him, chasing each other in and out of the marble columns supporting the ceiling, but they didn't even acknowledge his presence. They couldn't see him, not even when they turned around and began their serpentine winding through the pillars from the other end. The girl chasing the boy had eyes that reminded him so much of—

Nico's mouth fell open and he was momentarily overtaken by a loud rushing sound that seemed to come from all around him, as if the world was being whipped away at speed leaving him just temporarily hanging around in the vacuum of space. The young girl running towards him was unmistakably Bianca and the boy… He reached out automatically to grasp at his younger self as he blundered past, giggling, but his hand went straight through. He definitely didn't exist to them.

It was almost as if a team of artists had moved into his head and were rapidly outlining out this very scene for his brain to comprehend. Little by little, starting with sketchy lines which were gradually shaded in and fleshed out with colour, Nico began to remember. With everything from the game of tag he and Bianca were playing to the overpowering scent of the concierge's cologne, this very scene came back to him. He had been here before. He knew what was about to happen.

He wrenched his eyes away from mini-him and mini-Bianca, whirling around to face his mother on the couch against the wall. Even though he remembered this scene now, remembered her, remembered as much of his life before the Lotus Hotel as was humanly possible for a nine-year-old to recollect, seeing her sitting there was still a shock that caused his breath to hitch in his throat.

"Mom?" he murmured, contradicting his previous thoughts. She looked up, just briefly. His heart surged and he stepped forwards, forgetting that he was out of time and out of a body, that she couldn't see him, but then she looked through him at the children and gave a small contented smile. His heart took a nosedive and he glanced in the kids' direction too, wishing he could tell them both to run up to their mother right now and get one last hug and kiss from her before she went upstairs and never came down again.

He looked away when she got off the couch and headed for the elevator, smoothing her dress and adjusting her hat as she went. Her heels clicked on the floor and he managed to look up just in time to catch her peeping over her shoulder. Quickly, he permanently etched the image of her last smile onto his brain before the elevator doors clanged open and she stepped in. Now it was just a matter of counting down — Nico managed it perfectly, starting at five. The hotel exploded as soon as he hit zero and the memory was temporarily shattered with the power of the blast.

When it reformed he was standing in exactly the same place but the lobby had been blown to smithereens. Nothing was recognisable. Chunks of columns, masonry, tiles, drywall and splintered furniture littered the blast site as far as he could see, some debris making it into the street, which was now fully visible. Water was gushing from sheared pipes, filling the scene with the hissing and splashing of escaping water, yet fires were still managing to leap and crackle everywhere, hungrily consuming more and more fuel and growing ever-bigger. As the biggest thunderclap Nico had ever heard clashed overhead, a corner of outside wall still supporting a tiny amount of ceiling groaned and crumbled, spewing more rubble across the floor. Lightning flickered across the angry sky over his head.

He remembered this now. The shellshock, the ringing in his ears from the blast, the barely-dawning comprehension that there was something very wrong with his mother… He did not need Hades falling to his knees in front of Maria's prone and broken form, scooping her from the floor and clutching her to his chest, rocking her slightly, to know that his mother was dead. Again.

He wanted out.

His eyes frantically swept the ex-room, looking desperately for some clue as to how he could get back to his body. They didn't supply you with ruby slippers anymore like they did back in the good ol' days: budget cuts and such. Maybe there was some kind of mark, like the marks of Daedalus all over the Labyrinth. Something, anything, that he could push or click together three times and leave this whole scene behind him because what had just unfolded was something that he had no way to deal with. Having his memory wiped had been a massive scab covering the wound that this moment had rent inside him — now it had been ripped away and the wound was haemorrhaging.

His chest was tight and he found out that he was crying when he reached up to rub irritation from his eye. This was worse, seeing it from this point of view. His younger self had never really understood what had happened and then his memory had been erased, anyway. Standing here now, older and more versed in the ways of the world, he knew that Zeus had struck his mother down because Hades had disobeyed him. Had his father not been so quick off the mark, Zeus's lightning bolt would have killed both him and Bianca along with their mother, which had undoubtedly been the plan all along.

His father was screaming at the sky, cursing Zeus and promising vengeance when Alecto appeared, taking Maria's body and the children with her under strict instructions to wash their memories away in the Lethe and place them in the Lotus Hotel. So now he knew what had happened. His father had tried to protect him from what he was seeing not two feet away right now. His mother's body vanishing with Alecto elicited a small sob from him: her disappearance just served to reinforce the fact that she was gone for good. He wished he had listened to his father. Was this what he wanted to see? Had this completed him?

This was the moment Hades had been speaking of earlier, when he said that Zeus had taken someone from him that he had loved very much. The grief was still raw even decades later — Nico had seen that. He wondered if his father had ever fallen so completely in love before and a small part of him hoped that he hadn't, that his mother and therefore he were precious to his father, but that part was quickly quashed by overwhelming logic. His father was thousands of years old. You don't live for millennia and have just the one true love.

He suddenly felt a tugging sensation, almost as if someone or something was trying to drag him out of the scene in front of him. He had just seen a young girl walk in wearing a pretty multicoloured floral dress, her bare feet seemingly immune to the shards of ceramic and glass, the twisted remnants of metal objects and spars of splintered wood jutting from the wreckage almost as if they were reaching out for help. There was still more to this scene, something he had never seen before because by this point he had probably had his memory wiped and was starting his extended stay in Vegas.

The girl absently moved half an end table out of her way as she approached Hades: nothing was going to get in her path. She had deep, sad eyes that should never be the eyes looking back at you from the face of a twelve-year-old.

"I warned you," she said almost musically, causing the Lord of the Dead to round on her. Hades' face was a mask of grief except for the snarl baring his teeth at the new arrival.

Someone really didn't want Nico to see this. The tugging at him became more and more earnest, trying to withdraw him from the vision. He was suddenly aware of his corporeal form kneeling in the flowerbed and could hear the tinkling of a tree in bloom with hundreds of delicate silver bells in the distance as a slight breeze blew through the branches. Still he scrambled to stay. The greater the pull became the more he resisted it, gritting his teeth and focussing on the scene unfolding before him rather than what was waiting for him in the gardens. This was a footnote to the fateful scene he had just witnessed and he wasn't going to leave until he had seen it through to the end. As Nico strained to stay, Hades had been taking his grief out on the girl, screaming at her, but in his concentration Nico had missed most of the exchange.

"I foresee the future," the girl reminded Hades. "I cannot change it."

Nico gasped, the sudden lapse in concentration almost allowing whoever it was to wrench him from the scene, but at the last minute he re-dug his mental heels in again. Foreseeing the future? This was the Oracle of Delphi before she had become mummified. No wonder her eyes were so filled with pain. That was not what he had been expecting. His father went unexpectedly silent in a way that Nico recognised as so dangerous and threatening that he immediately looked at him. Hades' eyes were alight with fire blacker than that Nico had ever seen reside there before. Even when he was furious with Nico, Hades had never looked this intent, this incensed and beside himself. Nothing good would come of this and Nico reached out for the girl, desperately wanting to tell her to hide or run because something terrible was coming her way like a freight train and she was just a little girl powerless standing on the tracks.

"Then, Oracle, hear the words of Hades," his father growled. "Perhaps I cannot bring back Maria. Nor can I bring you to an early death. But your soul is still mortal, and I _can _still curse you."

Nico closed his eyes briefly, his shoulders sagging. He had known this was coming but that didn't make it any easier to watch. The yanking on his soul had become almost painful and he gave a small cry as he desperately clung on. He owed it to this poor, trembling girl, to the Oracle. No one else knew her fate, no one else knew what his father had done and even if he wasn't really here, even if this was just a memory, he had to see it through. For her sake.

Hades' voice was rising maniacally as he jabbed an accusing finger at the Oracle. As he seethed the fire in his eyes grew until it was leaping from the very sockets in violent spurts and sparks. His voice twisted into one final, vindictive snarl and he threw out his arm, blasting the girl with a pulse of black energy that thrummed with power so great it blasted the image to pieces and Nico was finally released, panting, back into his father's realm. The screams of the Oracle still echoed in his ears.

Soit was Hades who had cursed the Oracle and condemned a young girl to a fate worse than death, her body worn with the decades but unable to truly die, still animated by the spirit trapped inside her. His father had therefore by proxy ordained the madness of May Castellan, the insanity that pushed a terrified Luke away from the only parental comfort he knew. May had glimpsed the swirling, green abyss of the future stretching out to infinity before her but had not been able to take on the Oracle's spirit and therefore gain the protection her mortal body required to gaze into the future unharmed. So Luke had desperately sought out recognition from his father because his mother was unable to be there for him yet Hermes, as was the way with the immortals, was unable to spare the time to properly be the father Luke truly needed.

Luke had been effectively orphaned by Hades' curse and the bitterness inside him had grown so much that he had opened himself up body and soul to Kronos in a bid to bring down Olympus. All because of a vengeful curse seventy years before. A vengeful curse cast by his father. Is that why Hades refused to join the battle? Not just because of a grudge against Zeus but because he knew he had inadvertently set a large part of it in motion and feared total, utter exile that went further than even his current limitations should his family find out what he had done?

It was then he realised that Hades' hand was on his shoulder, gripping it cruelly and providing an instantly recognisable tugging at his very soul that he had felt whilst in the vision. That was something his father had never intended him to see and had been trying to pull him away from this entire time.

"And just what," Hades asked, his jaw set and a scowl marring his features, "do you think you're doing?"

"Father—" Nico began, glad this time when his father cut him off with a vicious shake that also served to drag him to his feet. He had no idea how he was going to explain himself, anyway.

"I was, I was…" Nico let out a shuddering breath of defeat, squirming slightly as his father managed to increase what was already a vice-like grip. "I was trying to summon my mother," he admitted finally, hanging his head. "I know you said that I wasn't allowed to and even Bianca told me that I wasn't supposed to see her, but—"

"And yet you choose to flout all of these rules anyway?" Hades asked with a sneer. "You think that you are above the rules I set for you, my son, down here in my own domain?" He ended his tirade with a roar and shoved Nico so hard that he flew backwards a few feet and slammed into the trunk of the tree with the bells on, a discordant jangle echoing angrily throughout the garden.

"I just needed to see!" Nico told him, wincing as he got to his feet. "I just had to know who she _was_."

"You saw more than either of us bargained for," Hades muttered bitterly. "Despite that you saw the way Zeus slaughtered your mother without a second thought. You should now see why I have such a… _grudge_ against him and the other gods, to use your term. Do you understand why I have no desire to come to my brother's aid? He _killed _her, Nico! He's the reason you have no mother, the reason you spent so many years imprisoned in that Hotel so you would be safe from him!"

"It was you," Nico said suddenly. "_You _showed me that instead of my mother? Why, to turn me against the other gods too? So I'd be nice and obedient and sit here with you and wait to be picked off by Kronos just like she was by Zeus?"

Hades pressed his lips into a thin line. "I admit that there may have been an ulterior motive to my actions," he said eventually. "But you wanted to know the truth and now you do. As for the tail end of the vision, well, that was just… _unpleasant_ all round. I wish you hadn't fought me when I tried to remove you from it. I had no idea it would be so difficult to extract you or I wouldn't have sent you in at all. Your powers grow quickly."

"You're right. I _did _want to know the truth," Nico said. "The whole truth. And now I do. I went to see May Castellan, a woman driven nuts because of your curse on the Oracle. Do you know who May Castellan is? Did you know that the collateral damage inflicted by your curse made Luke Castellan run away, turned him against the other gods and threw him into the arms of Kronos? Did you?"

"I know all," Hades said quietly. "Do not take me for a fool, Nico. I know full well what I have done, that I have played a part in unleashing my father and setting him loose on the world. Do you think I need to stand here in this _ridiculous _garden of my wife's and be reminded of that by a mere pubescent boy? What I did to the Oracle may have been misguided, it may have been out of anger, but it does not change what Zeus did to your mother first."

"He wasn't trying to kill her, you know," Nico said. "He was aiming for me and Bianca. She was just _collateral damage. _Seems like you both have that in common at least."

"DO NOT COMPARE ME TO _HIM_!" Hades roared, fire leaping into his eyes. He began to shimmer and vibrate just like Nico had seen in his vision when he had nearly assumed his true godly form.

"You seem pretty similar to me!" Nico yelled back, not caring if his father transformed and immolated him. He was sick and tired of having what seemed like the same freaking argument constantly. "Zeus was wrong, sure, but you broke a pact you made to deliver me and Bianca to him. If you had just done it then do you think he would have blasted us?"

"He would have turned you against me!" Hades howled, growing larger all the time.

"_You don't know that!" _Nico shouted at him. "How could you possibly know that? All Zeus wanted to do was protect Olympus from a child that might turn sixteen and destroy you all. He was acting for the preservation of a _civilisation _and I'm not saying he was right but he had good reasons!"

"Why did he go and have a bastard brat of his own then?" Hades screamed, moments away from bursting into his true form.

"A brat he turned into a _fucking tree_!" Nico reminded him savagely, letting the curse word he had never used before fly with wild abandon. He guessed demigods had been blasted for saying things that were nowhere near as bad as that to gods in the past. "His own daughter! And not just to save her life, I'm guessing. So she wouldn't age fast enough to be sixteen and destroy you all."

Hades was breathing hard as he processed this information. He stopped growing and the glow coming off him became a little dimmer. "He didn't kill _her_ though, did he?" he asked, a dull, bitter resentment tingeing his voice as a replacement for the earlier rage. He began to shrink rapidly back to his normal size.

"Like I said: I don't agree with him. What he did was wrong but we're all in this together fighting to save Olympus. If we're divided, we're weak. If we're fighting each other and pointing accusing fingers than we're even weaker. Yeah, Zeus killed my mother and tried to kill me but who cursed the Oracle and set the wheels turning towards this mess? No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes and has their flaws, even you and the rest of the gods."

Hades nostrils flared. He regarded Nico for several minutes in total silence, his eyes impassive and icy, before vanishing in a blast of cold air that raised goosebumps all the way up Nico's arms.


	4. Chapter 4

**Last chapter! Here it is. Thanks for all of the reviews and support you have given me throughout this fic. It's meant a lot to me. Really, it's meant more to me than you can imagine. Thanks particularly to Musafreen andOrochi-Ne, who have both been sending me some awesome PMs recently as well as CoolWater123, whose reviews are insanely kind and complimentary. I am not worthy. Also, quick note to Resha04: I messed with the spaces for this chapter. I don't know if it's reflected in the final thing but we can but hope. Let's see if this is any easier on your eyes.**

**I have a short(ish) oneshot mostly written to post after this, in the next couple of days, then I should really finish other things before starting the next fic I have in mind, which will probably be quite long. I have quite a bit of it written and I can already tell it's going to get away from me. But such is life.**

**Once again, I cannot express enough the gratitude I feel for everyone that's read and reviewed this fic, as well as everyone that's alerted and favourited etc. Thank you to you ALL and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.**

**Mission to Marzipan, Over and Out.**

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Maybe he was finally getting through to his father. Hades hadn't had a retort at the ready: instead he had simply disappeared. That was progress, right? A sign that he was actually managing to sustain a successful argument against everything his father believed in? Nico sighed, keeping _that _particular gem of hope ridiculously close to his chest. It was a possibility, sure, but then it was also a possibility that Chiron would dye his tail powder blue in homage to My Little Pony or that Clarisse would put on a dress.

He held out a hand and let his fingertips graze along the wall absently as he walked past, running his fingers over a mix of cold stonework and lavish wall-hangings. Having come in from the garden, he was in one of the wide outer corridors of his father's palace, wandering around pretty much aimlessly. Let's face it, he had no place to be and he wasn't in a hurry to get back to his room. He'd spent far too much time in there during this visit as it was, thanks. He sighed again, wracking his brain to try and come up with a solution to the task Percy had set him. How was he supposed to get his father on their side?

His footsteps echoed slightly because he was walking next to the wall on the stonework: the black carpet only ran down the middle of the hallway. It suddenly struck him that it was odd for it to be quiet enough to hear the echo of his own footsteps anywhere in his father's place. Normally there were at least skeletal servants hurrying back and forth — joints without flesh surrounding them or tendons and ligaments holding them in place made a surprising amount of noise — but now there was nothing. He frowned, slowing his step a little. Something felt wrong here…

As if on cue, a hot pink hydrangea blossom appeared right in front of his face and exploded like a mini-firework, tossing blazing dots of light all over his field of vision. He hissed and threw his arm over his face, temporarily stunned and pretty much blinded. A door to his left burst open and he yelped as he was snatched by the arm and dragged bodily through it, struggling as he was yanked along. The door slammed and he was shoved against the wall, a hand pressed firmly over his mouth and mostly blocking his nose so that it was pretty much impossible for him to breathe. He grunted against the palm, suddenly smelling the unmistakable floral scent that, on a mortal woman, would come from using half a bottle of high-end perfume. Down here, however, that aroma could only come from his stepmother and she smelled like that without the aid of artificial scents.

"Stop struggling you silly little brat!" Persephone hissed at him. "I don't know how long I've kept the servants away for and do you want them to come running?"

Given that Nico was about to black out from lack of oxygen, he'd be happy if Kronos himself came running at this moment. There needed to be a freaking cap on how many family members could assault you in one day. First his cousin tried to strangle him, then his father sent him flying into a tree and now his stepmother was attempting to smother him. All in all it hadn't been a good day. Now he just needed Demeter to turn up and start wailing on him with an ear of corn and he'd pretty much have collected a full set of familial injuries. Finally Persephone huffed a sigh and let go of Nico. He slid down the wall to the floor, never so happy to inhale the air of his father's realm. He breathed in so hard and fast he choked on the air itself, feeling dizzy.

"You humans and your precious _air_," Persephone snorted crossly, folding her arms and glaring at him, as if it was his fault that human biology demanded oxygen to survive.

"Oh yeah. Sorry about my whole needing to _breathe _thing," Nico said. "I'm working on it." He paused, his need to snark temporarily blocking out the last past of Persephone's sentence. "Wait, _why_ don't you want the servants to know that we're here?"

"Don't you take that tone with me," Persephone snapped, straightening the tiara on her hair as she said it. As if he needed reminding any further who she was. "And I don't want the servants to know we're here because they might tell my husband and I'd rather keep this quiet. Now, for the love of Olympus get up off the floor. All of this looking down is going to give me neck issues."

Nico scowled but climbed to his feet anyway. "So this wasn't just your run-of-the-mill assassination attempt? You wanted to tell me something you didn't want my father to know?" he asked, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. He had never been alone with his stepmother for an extended period of time before, a fact that suited them both just fine, and the awkward silence between them was bordering on deafening, especially when coupled with the sparks of tension arising just from them simply interacting. Persephone was not Nico's number one fan and had made that very clear by giving him a stalk and petals on more than one occasion.

Persephone sighed and rolled her eyes, just to let him know what a huge inconvenience she found the entire situation to be. "I need you to… well, _help me_," she eventually said reluctantly, pursing her lips at the end of the sentence in distaste but at least breaking the gaping silence.

"Huh?" Nico asked, blinking. "_You _want _my _help?"

"If you try to remind me outside this room that I said those words I swear to Zeus I will turn you into an orchid and plant you in Alaska just to watch you get all withered and frostbitten," Persephone bit out rapidly at him. "But yes. I need you to get me out of here."

"This… room?" Nico asked blankly, looking around at the four walls and frowning in confusion.

"Oh, my. It's like talking to a Cyclops," Persephone murmured to herself, looking down and pinching the bridge of her nose. "Honestly. No, not this _room_. This _realm_. It's the middle of freaking summer up there and where am I? Am I enjoying my six months of freedom? Does this look like the bargain I struck with my husband?"

"Well, he can't _force _you to stay down here," Nico said reasonably. "Zeus said—"

"Oh please. Do you really think Zeus has got time to be dealing with the domestic disputes of a minor goddess like me?" Persephone asked, rolling her eyes at his ignorance. "I mean, he's busy trying to save the whole of Olympus from an attack by Typhon, our greatest enemy, but sure he'll just pop down here and tell his brother that he's not honouring his marital contract. Don't be so _ridiculous_."

"Well what do you want me to do about it?" Nico asked, folding his arms over his chest defensively. "How am I supposed to help you?"

Persephone sighed. "He _listens _to you," she said simply, adding a wry shrug. "I don't know why. Zeus knows I've been nagging him for thousands of years and he just blocks it out, yet he _listens to you. _For some reason. Apparently, he must think your opinion is valid or something bizarre like that"

Nico scoffed, wrenching up the sleeves of his jacket to reveal with nearly-identical wounds on his wrists from the manacles. "He chained me up in the dungeons. Something tells me he's not that keen on me."

"He's changing his mind already," Persephone continued with another shrug, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the damage to Nico's wrists and looking away until he had rolled his sleeves back down. "Already his resolve is weakening and it's definitely not anything my mother or I have said to him. It must be you."

Nico's shoulders slumped and he tilted his head backwards tiredly, staring at the ceiling. "That's just it. I don't know what to say to him, okay?" he told her. "Every time I say anything about it he just gets really mad and I end up being the one that's screwed over. So thanks, but I'll pass. Find your own way out of here." He turned around and placed his hand on the doorknob, but Persephone appeared beside him in a swirl of petals and leant hard on the door with one hand so he couldn't open it. In the other hand she was holding his sword.

"This is yours," she said, handing it to him. "It's been next to our bed since he took it from you and he's been staring at it all dark and brooding and regretful. You know, even _more _than usual. He made this for you, okay? He must care about you a little bit. I mean, his reasoning mystifies me but apparently he sees something in you more than anyone else close to him. So just go and sort this mess out so I can enjoy my summer. I'm so _sick _of this place and my _mother _and her _cereal._If I have to have one more bowl I may just throttle someone." She looked pointedly at Nico. Given that everyone down here bar him was either dead or immortal, it wasn't hard to guess who her intended target would be.

"Didn't you just try that?" Nico asked innocently as he slid his sword into the empty sheath.

Persephone narrowed her eyes at him, but Nico was sure he saw the corners of her mouth quirk up into an infinitesimal smile. "Just fix this mess. Sooner rather than later. I am so _bored _down here. I'm not even supposedto be here right now, you know? It's not fair. Just send my husband up to fight in this silly little war so we can win and I can get back to growing actual flowers instead of those gaudy jewelled ones he thinks are a suitable substitute. They're not, you know. I mean, it was sweet of him to think of me like that but sometimes men just— Well. I'm sure it won't be long before you're revealing shortcomings of your very own in that department. I mean, you have so many already it won't be a stretch to add a few more. Now, do as I ask. I mean, it's probably the right thing to do and all but seriously, my wrath will be horrible if you don't. Ciao!" She vanished in a burst of petals.

Nico leant backwards against the door and closed his eyes, Persephone's lingering floral scent adding to his stabbing headache. Percy wanted him to persuade his father to save the world. Persephone wanted him to persuade his father to save the world. Why was it always down to him? What did they think he had going with his father that made it possible for him to just have Hades and his entire realm follow him into battle at the snap of his fingers? He was freaking _twelve. _What was everyone smoking that suddenly made him their saviour? The whole point of giving Percy invulnerability was to make Percy the one who had to bear the burden of saving the world and safely passing the buck. Clearly, something had not been properly stamped during the official buck-passing process and he was left with some of it to deal with all by himself.

He opened the door and stepped out into the hall again, hesitating with his hand still resting on the doorknob. Okay. Next move. Crawling into a corner and crying seemed like a pretty good choice right now. Maybe he should try that. Even though he was in his father's realm and so healed faster, similar to Percy in water, he still ached all over from the less-than-favourable treatment he'd received down here so far. Just what was he supposed to _do_? He slammed the door angrily behind him and stormed off down the hall in the direction he'd been going in before he'd been so rudely interrupted: towards his father's throne room. This was ridiculous and it had to be sorted for the sake of his sanity. Well. And for the sake of the world he supposed. He was running up a flight of stairs towards the inner sanctums of his father's palace when someone grabbed his arm and yanked him into an alcove off the staircase.

"It's the growing season!" Demeter lamented immediately and desperately, a bunch of wheat appearing in her hands like a bridal bouquet before Nico even had time to work out what was going on. She sniffed the wheat as if it wasan actual bouquet and then caressed it lovingly, sighing deeply. "Do you know what I'm missing stuck in this damp, dark…?" She couldn't finish her sentence, instead just shuddering. The wheat began to wilt as she looked at it, the Underworld too harsh an environment for it, so she waved a sad hand over it and made it disappear. "You—"

"Have to help you?" Nico finished for her, his deadpan voice tinged with exhaustion. "Yeah. There's a lot of that going round today."

"Yes!" Demeter said, nodding and latching onto his arm. "You're perfectly correct. It's just that—"

"Growing season. Underworld interfering with your life. Want war to be over so things can go back to normal et cetera, et cetera. Got it," Nico muttered bitterly. "Already on it. Fixing it as we speak. Time to let go of me so I can do that, okay?"

Demeter frowned at him, sniffing haughtily as she let go of his arm. "Patience is a virtue you know," she told him stiffly. "Crops don't grow overnight. There's no sense in rushing things. If you were a child of mind I'd make sure you put in some serious farming time so you gained a proper appreciation of agriculture. Perhaps it would teach you to be less hasty. And as for your manners, well, I think those are past fixing. But as a child of my brother and son-in-law I'm _hardly _surprised. Not exactly a charmer, your father. Can't even get a date without dragging one into his chariot by her hair."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap," Nico said tiredly. Even in a desperate situation, it was a bad idea to piss off a goddess. "I've just got a lot on my mind. A whole buffet of stuff on my plate right now. I feel like I'm getting pulled in so many different directions."

Demeter warmed to him slightly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I know your father treats you harshly, child. You have been through a lot in the past day or so. Remember this, though. He truly cares about you, even if he has a _very _odd way of showing it. Now, go to him. Try and get him to change his mind. If anyone can do it, it's you." She vanished, leaving Nico alone in the alcove, the stone wall practically screaming out for him to bash his head against it.

Where was a banished Titan Lord to blow you to smithereens when you really needed one, for the love of Olympus? Life would be much simpler and by far less stressful if he were floating around as tiny little individual Nico atoms. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath and forced himself out of the alcove and back onto the staircase again, continuing upwards towards his father's throne room. He assumed that his father would be hanging out there, where he was most comfortable in his own power and could therefore ignore Nico's jibes about the dangers of Kronos. Also, there was a huge throne to sit on for the purposes of brooding, sulking and seething. However, when he thought to check (what kind of demigod would he be if he couldn't sense the major source of power in any realm, especially his own?) he found that Hades was actually in the gardens. Nico stopped dead on the stairs in surprise and nearly fell flat on his face. What was his father doing there? Well, gardens it was, then. Again. Closing his eyes, he vanished into the shadows. No more stairs. Not today.

* * *

There was a table on a veranda that was set for four people. Twisted wrought iron railings and several steps separated it from the rest of the palace gardens. His mouth fell open when he saw Demeter and Persephone sitting right there, blithely pretending that their earlier conversations with Nico hadn't happened. Nico thought he saw them both flick their eyes towards him when he appeared out of the shadows but they gave him no further notice, instead forcing themselves to take part in meaningless light chatter.

Persephone's Queen of the Underworld tiara had been replaced by a wreath of flowers, one that she was changing every so often with an absent wave of her hand. It shifted from sunflowers to daisies to roses to irises mostly without her thinking about it. It seemed that she had to change the flowers often because they quickly began to wilt, the petals browning and curling inwards the longer they were exposed to the air of Hades. Demeter was busying herself by lining up about twenty boxes of shredded wheat exactly parallel to the edge of the table and quietly humming 'Old McDonald Had A Farm' to herself. The humming didn't stop even when she spoke to answer Persephone, just carried on in a weird disembodied way that Nico found supremely creepy until Demeter picked up the tune again. Hades was sitting at the head of the table, his arms crossed tightly across his chest and a scowl on his face. It deepened when he saw Nico and his lip curled into a sneer.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you were eating," Nico said, bowing his head and turning around to leave. "I'll come back."

"NO!" Persephone and Demeter said forcefully at exactly the same time, Persephone even forgetting herself and reaching out for him as if to try and stop him leaving.

"Sit, child," Demeter said almost desperately, moving her chair to the end of the table so she was facing Hades. "Look! There's plenty of room. I'll just scoot over, don't mind me. Have a chair next to your _father_." She snapped her fingers and conjured a chair from thin air, patting the seat urgently while Persephone took care of summoning him a place setting.

"Yes, what a good idea, mother," Persephone said, agreeing with her mother for the first time in several centuries. She zapped a daffodil into a vase right in front of Nico's new bowl. "Perfect. Now, what was it you were going to say, hmm? Go ahead. We're all listening."

Several thousand years and apparently neither goddess had bothered to take a dictionary off a shelf and look up the meaning of the word 'subtlety'. There were neon signs in Vegas that weren't as glaringly obvious as the mother/daughter combo in front of him. Nico sighed and slid into his chair, pulling it closer to the table. Demeter beamed at him, leaning forwards and resting her chin on her palm pointedly as if he were about to say the most riveting thing she had ever heard.

"Oh, nothing really," Nico said, his voice shrinking under the murderous expression of his father. He shrugged nonchalantly, clearing his throat to try and take the squeak out of his voice. "What are we eating?" He had to turn a yelp into a cough as Persephone's pump connected hard with his shin. She was glaring at him and his complimentary daffodil vanished as she flicked her head repeatedly towards Hades, her teeth clenched at him.

"Cereal!" Demeter answered brightly, the desire to dole out shredded wheat temporarily blotting out the real reason Nico had sat down at the table. She reached for Nico's bowl and a box of shredded wheat but Persephone cut her off with a look and a shake of her head. Demeter sat back down in her chair but reluctantly, still staring at Nico's empty bowl. It was a sign of the tension around the table that Persephone didn't utter a single word of complaint about the menu at Demeter's table. Persephone was glaring at Nico, urging him to speak with her eyes, and Demeter was smoothing the already wrinkle-free tablecloth and sneaking glances up at both Hades and Nico whenever she felt like it was safe to do so. When she had practically worn the tablecloth through with her smoothing she began buffing imaginary spots off her silverware with a handkerchief.

"Father, just listen to what I have to say," Nico began, trying to catch his father's gaze. "Just listen, truly listen, one more time and think about it. That's all I ask. I've been having dreams about the battle going on in Manhattan. We're not_winning_. Typhon is advancing on Olympus and Kronos keeps getting stronger! If you would just add yourhuge power to the resistance, then—"

"ENOUGH!" Hades roared, slamming his fists down on the table and making all of the tableware jump into the air and clang back down to the surface. He got up from his chair so fast it toppled over backwards and swept past the table down into the gardens, striding away from his son as fast as he could.

Nico sagged down in his chair and offered a what-can-you-do? shrug to his stepmother. When all he received in answer was a bruise on his right shin that matched the earlier one on his left and a semi-encouraging pat on the arm from Demeter he got up from the table and cautiously followed his father into the gardens.

"Olympus is going to fall!" Nico called to Hades, crossing his arms and leaning against the trunk of a tree. "Just think about that. Think about what that means! Why fight so hard to overthrow Kronos the first time and then let him use you as a doormat now? You _have _to help them!" He pushed off the tree and stalked over to his father, following him as he paced desperately, his hands over his ears as he tried to block out the incessant pleadings of his son.

The more Nico spoke, the more Hades saw that what he was saying was true and the more he was persuaded to go to the aid of his family. Yet with renewed anger, he realised that Nico's words were also pushing out his earlier convictions involving the death of Maria and the millennia of contemptuous treatment he'd had at the hands of his siblings and their godly children, who all seemed to have managed to get nepotistic thrones on Olympus even though they had been spawned after the first rebellion, while he was forced to stay down here in the darkness. Anger surged inside him. He was not used to such conflict within him: being torn between two decisions was something new, something that he had never had to face up to until Nico came along. He had always been absolutely sure of himself before; after all, omnipotent — if a god couldn't be absolutely certain then who could?

"You _have _to!" Nico insisted, marching after his father and flailing his arms in frustration at him.

"I don't _have _to do anything! I'm a god!" Hades shouted back in reply, his eyes blazing.

Nico threw his head back in frustration and glanced over to Persephone and Demeter, who were trying to pretend that they weren't hanging on every word that father and son were screaming at each other across the gardens. Demeter was getting to pour her cereal at last and Persephone took a break from messing with the colours of the flower arrangement to make a winding motion with her hand in frustration, urging him to try again and faster. As he briefly relented, Nico suddenly felt his boot fill with grain and a thorn stab him in the back of his knee as little 'incentives' to go on. Grimacing, he kicked his foot to shift the grain so he could actually walk and carried on after his father, limping slightly.

"Father," Nico said, "if Olympus falls, your own palace's safety doesn't matter. You'll fade too."

"I am not an Olympian," Hades growled darkly. "My family has made that perfectly clear."

"You are," Nico said obstinately. "Whether you like it or not."

This argument was going round and round in the way it had been going since Nico had got here, and Nico shifted his mouth to autopilot and let the same points tumble out in response to his father's ranting. Second verse, same as the first. Maybe repetition would be the key to bringing his father down. Wearing him down slowly could work. It would be glacial slow, but maybe he would get there in the end. If his head hadn't imploded from frustration and he hadn't died of old age.

"Maria died!" Hades reminded him, his mother's name jerking Nico out of the automatic argument he had been engaged in.

Nico squared his shoulders. If Hades thought that dragging his mother back into the debate was going to get Nico to quit then he was very wrong. It hadn't worked earlier and he was not going to let his emotions cloud his judgement now. Something Bianca said suddenly popped into his brain and it was spilling out of his mouth before he could even stop it. "Holding grudges is a fatal flaw. Bianca warned me about that and she was right," he said urgently. It was time his father learned to let go, just as he had learned to let go of his grudge against Percy with Bianca's help. That was the only way they were going to win the war, by cooperating.

Hades gave a disgusted snort. "For demigods! I am immortal, all powerful! I would not help the other gods if they begged me, if Percy Jackson himself pleaded—"

"You're just as much of an outcast as I am!" Nico yelled, losing his temper completely. "Stop being angry about it and do something helpful for once. That's the only way they'll respect you!"

His father's palm filled with black fire and Nico took a sharp intake of breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Demeter tighten her grip on the cereal box nervously, crushing the cardboard and spilling shredded wheat out of the top. Persephone gave a tiny nervous squeak, thinking she was about to see her only ticket out of the Underworld be immolated. Hades glanced quickly at the terrace and Demeter composed herself first, picking up bits of cereal and doling them out evenly between the bowls.

"Yes, please," she complained, clearing her throat and aiming for nonchalance. "Shut him up."

"Oh, I don't know," Persephone said pointedly, jabbing her mother in the side with her elbow and glaring at her. "I would rather fight in the war than eat another bowl of _cereal_," she added in a sickly sweet tone, including a tilt of the head and stop-ruining-everything eyes aimed at her mother. "This is _boring_."

Hades roared with anger, finally seeing that he had also lost the support of his wife and mother-in-law even if they were too scared to say it themselves. He threw the fireball at the silver tree with bells on he had slammed Nico into earlier and it melted into a puddle of molten metal. Did _every_one expect him to just drop everything and save the world with a family who all hated him?

"Please don't lose your temper," Persephone said, slipping around the table and coming noiselessly down into the garden. She stepped in front of Hades and cupped a gentle hand to his face, standing on tiptoe and pecking him on the lips. "Please don't be angry, but perhaps it _is _time to start a new era with your relationship to the other gods…" She stepped back, wincing, as Hades turned his annoyed gaze on her. "Maybe? Don't you think?" she backpedalled quickly. When Hades didn't reply she took courage and reached her arms up, wrapping them around his neck and grasping one wrist with the other hand to hold them there. "You know, I haven't seen you go to war for such a long time… There's something about that chariot and your armour that makes me just want to…" She stretched to whisper something in his ear, the sight making Nico nauseous enough to lose the breakfast he hadn't even had yet. There were some things a kid just shouldn't see, and your immortal father getting his ear practically chewed on on by your equally immortal stepmother was one of them.

"You dare try flattery and bribery with me?" Hades suddenly shouted, snatching her arms from around his neck and throwing them from him. Persephone nearly overbalanced and landed in one of her jewelled flowerbeds. "I don't expect this from you, my wife, of all people. This is insubordination!"

Persephone folded her arms angrily across her chest, her eyes flashing with rage. She stamped a stiletto and was about to bite out a retort when her mother cut her off by snatching her blood-red napkin from her lap and tossing it down in the middle of the table.

"Brother, enough," Demeter demanded, thrusting away from the table and walking to the railings, placing her hands on them and gripping the cold wrought iron. "Do you forget that I was there the first time we fought Father?" she questioned, pulling herself up to her full height, her mood clear for all to see. "I remember full well how difficult it was to win the fight against him and that was when we were all working together. What hope do you think we have now with everyone divided, hmm? Have you forgotten how devious Father is? Did it never occur to you that he _wants _this gulf between you and the rest of our family? He sees you as a _threat_! He wants you out of this fight. And I for one will not let you hide down here any longer." She slammed a fist down on the railing and a burst of grain shot from her hand and scattered itself on the soil below her. Such was her anger and determination that it even began to sprout despite the barren soil. "It is an act of pure cowardice, yes I said _cowardice _and I'll say it over and over again whether you give me that look or not. What kind of role model are you providing here for me, your baby sister, or for your wife, or even for _your_ _son_? This is the end of the matter. We go to war and we go now. I will hear no more debating." She snapped her fingers and a diadem of wheat appeared on her head and a celestial bronze sickle formed in her hand.

"Go if you want!" Hades snarled, rounding on his sister. "Go and side with your precious Olympians as I always knew you would! I was trying to keep you safe but if you want to go and lose a war against our father then be my guest."

"I'm going with her," Nico said stonily, climbing up the steps to stand beside Demeter. "It's the right thing to do and you know it."

Persephone sighed and rolled her eyes. "Fine, I suppose," she said, hitching up her dress as she climbed the stairs. "I don't want to be the only one left out. Plus, as I said, things are a little _dull _down here. Some excitement is just what the god of doctors ordered."

Hades seethed, his eyes blazing with actual fire. He had gone white, whiter than usual, with rage so that his face was practically translucent. A large purple vein was bulging in his temple as he regarded the three figures on the terrace. He seemed temporarily apoplectic with rage so great it had rendered him speechless. "GO THEN!" he roared at last, specks of spit flying from his mouth. "Go to your ends, traitors. See if I care!"

Demeter pursed her lips angrily and tossed her head a little higher into the air. "Come, child," she said to Nico, grasping his hand. Her palm was cool yet warm at the same time and her touch conjured up a flood of images of golden crops waving in the sun. It was oddly comforting. "If you father refuses to help, we will at least do all we can do. It is the right thing, the noble thing as you said. I am sorry I compared you earlier on the stairs. May Zeus himself take pity on you if you ever turn out like _him._"

"How dare you speak to me like that?" Hades yelled, waving his arms angrily. "I am the Lord of the Dead, King of the Underworld and I demand respect!"

"That was a title given to you by the Olympians," Demeter snapped. "As you reject us, so you reject that. You are Lord of Nothing, King of Nowhere now you turn your back on your family. Think about that as Kronos comes to banish you to the deepest pits of the realm you once claimed as your own."

Nico slipped his hand from Demeter's and made his way down the steps again as his father recoiled at Demeter's words, not entirely able to hide the realisation that came with them. Nico felt a stab of pity for Hades as he stood there alone in the gardens, everyone abandoning him for a cause he couldn't yet fully grasp. Nico took a deep breath and stopped in front of his father, pulling his sword out of its sheath. "What was this made for if you didn't want me to fight?" Nico asked him quietly, contemplating the edge of the blade. "If you didn't want me to use it to defend myself and bring honour to your house then why did you give it to me?"

"Where did you get that?" Hades said angrily. "Have you been stealing from me?"

"_I _gave it to him," Persephone said defiantly. "It _is_ his after all and he's perfectly right. Why does he have it if not to use it? He is a valiant fighter. His deeds bring honour to this palace, you _and_ your realm. Why shouldn't he have it?" Nico was so shocked he couldn't speak, even turning to stare open-mouthed at his stepmother. Under his gaze she shrugged exaggeratedly. "Or, you know. Like, whatever," she said dismissively, rolling her eyes heavily.

Those words of encouragement hastily and messily withdrawn Nico rolled his eyes and turned back to his father. "I know what they did to you. I know that Zeus took my mother away from me and do you think a part of me doesn't hate him for that? But don't you see that the greater good is more important than her death? There are _billions _of people about to die. The whole of western civilisation depends on us winning this war. I'm sorry but no matter how much I want my mom back no one person is more important than the good of humanity. No one." He paused, psyching himself up to say the last part. "Even you."

Hades took it better than expected in that he didn't immolate him. In fact, he didn't even speak at all. "What do you think I will get in return?" Hades said bitterly instead after a pause in which he gained control of his anger. "Doing this will not persuade my brother to bring Maria back."

"Those are the laws of death," Nico said heavily. "What has been done can't be undone. You know that, deep down. It's time to let go. Besides, what do you think Kronos will offer you, one of the most powerful gods who helped to slice and dice him and imprison him for, oh, a couple of _millennia _or so? Something tells me that waking up from that kind of nap, and in pieces at that, is going to make a Titan Lord a little cranky and you're going to be pretty high on his hit list."

"You have such great power at your command, brother," Demeter said. "If you want respect then _use _that power. If only to gain yourself the kind of position on Olympus that you have wanted from the beginning."

"Plus, I really meant what I said about you looking hot in all that armour," Persephone interjected with, nodding. "There's something about a god in armour that just—"

"Over-sharing!" Nico yelped, physically wincing at the mere thought of the end of his stepmother's sentence.

Hades sighed, turning on the spot so that his back was to them and placing a hand over his eyes. His whole body seemed to sag in defeat. "I suppose…" he eventually managed reluctantly, heavily. "I suppose, just because it would make sure my brothers owed me an eternal favour, that maybe I could do my bit. But I will need a little time to gather my army, my chariot, my—"

He was cut off by a deep, booming bark. There was an enormous crash as a dark, shadowy figure leapt and landed on top of the wall around the garden, breaking the masonry and scattering enormous stones everywhere. As it jumped down into the garden it annihilated a pergola up which vines sprouting diamonds were climbing. Hundreds of skeleton warriors dressed in armour and carrying weapons from what looked like every single battle or war every fought came bursting in through the various doors and some were even scaling the wall, all trying to detain the shadowy figure. Bugles and trumpets were giving alarm calls as spears, bows, swords, axes, rifles, machine guns and what Nico swore was an actual freaking canon were pointed at the figure, who let out a pleased bark, oblivious to the chaos it was causing, and made straight for Nico.

"Mrs O'Leary?" Nico yelped in disbelief as she came trotting over to him. "Stand down! Drop your weapons!" Nico shouted as loud as he could, holding his hands out to the assembled army. His voice was lost in the general clamour and as Mrs O'Leary came closer the sound of various guns being cocked was almost deafening. They had obviously mistaken the hellhound for a threat, perhaps not surprising since she had bounded over the palace walls and was barking at what was basically their First Family.

"MY SON TOLD YOU TO STAND DOWN!" Hades roared, suddenly growing about three feet. "Did you not hear him?" All eyes turned to Hades and weapons were lowered as he shrank back to normal size. "Better," he sniffed haughtily. "_Much_better. Nico, what is the meaning of this hellhound invading my palace?"

Mrs O'Leary was headbutting Nico over and over, almost knocking him down. She licked him with her massive tongue and crouched into a lying position, whimpering. Nico reached out and patted her on the nose but she couldn't be comforted and kept looking upwards, occasionally giving a jerk of her head in that direction.

"I think… I think she wants us to go to war," Nico said uncertainly. "Percy must have sent her." He turned to his father. "If Percy is sending Mrs O'Leary away from the fight, things must be desperate. We have to go now."

"I will not go to war because Percy Jackson commands me," Hades spat. "I will go to war for my own pride and for… for you, my son. Nico, I do not know how you became so insightful but I see now that you were right. Being down here for so long has only built resentment and left me with too much time to brood and reflect. My grudge has only got deeper and I have put myself before the world. I fought to gain control of the world from Kronos and if there's one thing I hate it's wasted effort. I will make sure Kronos falls and this will begin a new chapter in my relationship with Olympus. Perhaps I'll even manage to wangle a throne up there as part of the deal. You never know." He turned to the assembled army. "Well?" he shouted. "What are you waiting for? Where is my chariot? Fetch it this minute!" He gave a flourish of his arm and was suddenly dressed in full battle regalia.

Mrs O'Leary stood up wearily and turned around. She had somehow managed to loop her tail through the axel of Hades' chariot and had been pulling it along behind her all this time. No wonder the warriors had been so pissed: she'd hijacked their boss's chariot as well as invading the palace. With a flick of her tail she sent it sliding across the garden, the wheels leaving gouge marks in the soil, so that it came to rest right in front of Hades. All he had to do was step in. Mrs O'Leary walked behind Hades and began nudging him with her paw towards the chariot, desperately trying to get him on, whining pitifully.

"Do you want to go to war?" Nico asked the hellhound, grinning. "Who wants to go to war? Does Mrs O'Leary want to go and kill some Titans today? Yes she does!"

Hades snorted at his army. "You know, it says a lot when a hellhound is more efficient than an entire army. You best all fight well today or I am turning everyone here into glue so that the only battles you can be fighting will be with mortal kindergarteners, dried macaroni and glitter." He clapped his hands and two shadowy horses appeared between the shafts of the chariot and were instantly harnessed, pulling the chariot level. Hades stepped onboard, much to the delight of Mrs O'Leary, whose tail began to wag as she bent to give Hades a happy lick. Demeter and Persephone teleported in behind him and settled down for the ride. Nico almost expected them to get out a rug to put over their knees and tie headscarves over their hair. "Stay close, son," Hades said, taking the reins. "You will be my right hand man, as I think the current expression goes. We go to war against my father together."

Nico grinned, drawing his sword. "Damn straight we do," he said, his eyes glinting as he looked up at his father. "For the House of Hades." His heart practically burst out of his chest when he saw that even Hades' face has managed to crack a smile.

Hades raised his enormous sword, pointing it to the roof. "Well put, son," he said, beaming now. "For the glory of Hades, Olympus and the western world TO WAR!" he bellowed, the cry echoing back at him in waves. Nico could feel the earth cracking all across the realm and he knew that armed skeletons were clawing their way from the dirt across the Underworld without having to see it. It seemed like the entirety of Hades was rising to war, rising against Kronos.

Nico glanced up at his father and saw the light of respect for him, his son and heir, residing in Hades' eyes at last. So, his father had finally accepted him, huh? Suddenly, he knew it was going to be a good day to be a son of Hades, and come on: how often had anyone said _that_?

As he vanished, that thought kept him warm even in the screaming void of nothingness and shadows his body passed through on the way to do battle for Olympus and for his father.


End file.
